| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from King Lear by William Shakespeare: Her father's heart from her! Call France! Who stirs?
Call Burgundy! Cornwall and Albany,
With my two daughters' dowers digest this third;
Let pride, which she calls plainness, marry her.
I do invest you jointly in my power,
Preeminence, and all the large effects
That troop with majesty. Ourself, by monthly course,
With reservation of an hundred knights,
By you to be sustain'd, shall our abode
Make with you by due turns. Only we still retain
The name, and all th' additions to a king. The sway,
King Lear |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde: MRS. ERLYNNE. Yes, it is my will. And never forget your child - I
like to think of you as a mother. I like you to think of yourself
as one.
LADY WINDERMERE. [Looking up.] I always will now. Only once in
my life I have forgotten my own mother - that was last night. Oh,
if I had remembered her I should not have been so foolish, so
wicked.
MRS. ERLYNNE. [With a slight shudder.] Hush, last night is quite
over.
[Enter LORD WINDERMERE.]
LORD WINDERMERE. Your carriage has not come back yet, Mrs.
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: reconciled with one another; and he is as much in earnest about his
doctrine of retribution, which is repeated in all his more ethical
writings, as about his theory of knowledge. And while we may fairly
translate the dialectical into the language of Hegel, and the religious and
mythological into the language of Dante or Bunyan, the ethical speaks to us
still in the same voice, and appeals to a common feeling.
20. Two arguments of this ethical character occur in the Phaedo. The
first may be described as the aspiration of the soul after another state of
being. Like the Oriental or Christian mystic, the philosopher is seeking
to withdraw from impurities of sense, to leave the world and the things of
the world, and to find his higher self. Plato recognizes in these
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: and niece, who were all-powerful with her; and as the
whole arrangement was to bring very little expense
to anybody, and none at all to herself, as she foresaw
in it all the comforts of hurry, bustle, and importance,
and derived the immediate advantage of fancying herself
obliged to leave her own house, where she had been living
a month at her own cost, and take up her abode in theirs,
that every hour might be spent in their service, she was,
in fact, exceedingly delighted with the project.
CHAPTER XIV
Fanny seemed nearer being right than Edmund had supposed.
Mansfield Park |
